New in Print from Norman Smith: Recounting War in Modern China

The University of British Columbia Press has just released a book edited by our own Norman Smith and James Flath (University of Western Ontario): Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China.

In Beyond Suffering, a distinguished group of historians of modern China look beyond the geopolitical aspects of war to explore its social, institutional, and cultural dimensions, from child rearing and education to massacres and warlord mutinies. Though accounts of war-inflicted suffering are often fragmented or politically motivated, the authors show that they are crucial to understanding the multiple fronts on which wars are fought, experienced, and remembered. The chapters in Part 1, "Society at War," reveal how war and militarization can both structure and destabilize society, while those in Part 2, "Institutional Engagement," show how institutions and the people they represent can become pawns in larger power struggles. Lastly, Part 3, "Memory and Representation," examines the various media, monuments, and social controls by which war has been memorialized. - from the jacket

Visit the book at UBC Press